Paul Boccaccio

Why does the world appear to us in this threefold manner? A simple example can make it clear. Suppose I walk through a field where wildflowers are blooming. The flowers reveal their colors to me through my eyes—that is the fact I accept as given. When I then take pleasure in the wonderful display of colors, I am turning the fact into something that concerns me personally—that is, by means of my feelings, I relate the flowers to my own existence. A year later, when I go back to the same field, new flowers are there and they arouse new joy in me. The previous year’s enjoyment rises up as a memory; it is present in me although the object that prompted it in the first place is gone. And yet the flowers I am now seeing are of the same species as last year’s and have grown in accordance with the same laws. If I am familiar with this species and these laws, I will recognize them again in this year’s flowers, just as I did in last year’s. On reflection, I may realize that since last year’s flowers are gone, my enjoyment of them remains only in my memory; it is bound up with my personal existence alone. But what I recognized in the flowers both last year and this year will remain as long as such flowers grow; it is something that is revealed to me but is not dependent on my existence in the same way that my enjoyment is. My feelings of pleasure remain within me, while the laws, the essence of the flowers, exist in the world outside of me.

Thus, as human beings, we are constantly linking ourselves to the things of the world in a threefold way.

—Theodore Steiner, Theosophy